Page 10 of June (New Orleans #6)

E nid Becker : I’m not doing anything right now. Why?

Caroline bit her lower lip while she stared down at her phone. Jodie was leaning over her, reading the reply, too, as if she couldn’t wait for Caroline to tell her what Enid had said.

“Okay. See if she wants to hang out.”

“It’s barely ten in the morning. I can’t believe you stole my phone while I was peeing and messaged her.”

“You should’ve believed it,” Viv said from the bottom bunk below them. “I could’ve told you that.”

“When did you even see me type my password? I always use the face thing.”

“Please…” Jodie replied. “Your password is your dad’s birthday. Like that’s hard. I went to the party with you freshman year.”

“Well, I’m changing it.”

“That’s okay. I know your mom’s birthday, too.” Jodie smiled at her.

“Make it my birthday,” Viv added from below them.

“I know your birthday,” Jodie noted.

“You know my birthday?” Viv asked, softening a little.

Jodie moved until she could hang her head over the side of Caroline’s top bunk to look down at Viv and replied, “Of course, I know your birthday. Do you not know mine?”

“No, I do ,” Viv said softly.

“Okay. Can we get back to the fact that I now need to respond to Enid?” Caroline asked.

Jodie shifted back and said, “Tell her that you want to hang out.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Again, it’s ten in the morning,” she repeated. “I want to go out with her. Ten in the morning isn’t exactly the sexiest time of day.”

“Why not?” Jodie asked. “You could have brunch.”

“Brunch?” she said. “I don’t want to have brunch with her.”

“You want to have sex with her.”

Caroline gave Jodie wide eyes and pointed to the bed beneath them, where Viv was currently lying. Jodie shrugged and looked apologetic.

“Take her to the dining hall,” Viv suggested. “Have the Belgian waffles. You make them yourself, and that can be fun. Then, you can walk around or something or get off campus. Maybe go mini-golfing.”

“Mini-golf?” Caroline asked.

“Yeah, it’s fun. The one near us has an arcade, too. You can make a day of it and win her a prize with your tickets, or she could win you one. Then, you have an excuse to ask her to dinner because it’s nearly dinnertime, anyway, and you can go somewhere cheap; eat street food, maybe. Then, you can decide what, if anything, to do after that.”

Caroline shifted until her head was hanging over the side of the bed, and she stared at her roommate in disbelief.

“What? Where did that come from?”

“It’s just an idea,” Viv said when she lowered her book and shrugged just like Jodie had moments earlier.

Caroline shook her head and smiled at her just as her phone vibrated. Jodie stole it off the bed where Caroline had left it.

“She wants to know what you’re doing right now. Should I tell her that you’re contemplating how to ask her out on a date?”

“What? No.” Caroline took her phone back and started typing her own message. “There. I sent it.”

“What did you say?” Jodie asked.

There was a quick reply from Enid, so Caroline didn’t answer. She just read it on her phone.

Enid Becker : That sounds like fun.

◆◆◆

“Hi,” Enid said.

She looked great, wearing a pair of loose-fitting jeans with holes in the knees and a T-shirt with the school’s logo on it, making her look a little younger than her twenty-four years. Her blonde hair was pulled back, and she had a piece of it just in front of her ear. Caroline wanted to push it back for her but resisted the impulse. They’ve not said that this was a date. She had only suggested they come to the dining hall and have waffles, which they would make themselves, and they could eat as many as they wanted with only one swipe of the meal card.

“Hey,” she replied, smiling wide. “So, you’re a fan of waffles?”

“Yes, I’m only here for the waffles, obviously,” Enid joked.

Caroline laughed and said, “I’ll just swipe my card, and we can go make them.”

“Okay,” Enid agreed.

Caroline walked over to the register, where she handed her meal card to the student manning the swiper, who took it, swiped it, then eyed Enid, who was waiting close by, and handed the card back without saying anything. Caroline was grateful for that. She turned around and motioned for Enid to join her at the table where there were bottles of the pre-mixed batter. All they had to do was pour some in one of the two available waffle makers and wait for two minutes for the timer to go off. Then, they could add syrup or strawberries and whipped cream or whatever else they wanted.

“Do you want strawberries?” she asked Enid when the waffles were done, and they each had one on their plate.

“Sure,” Enid replied, and Caroline passed her the ladle she’d just used herself.

They made their waffles with a whole lot of extra toppings, and she knew she would have to thank Viv later because this really was a good idea. Enid sat down at a table, and Caroline got them both something to drink before returning and sitting down across from her.

“So, do you do this waffle thing a lot?” Enid asked.

“No, but I should. They’re good. I do it maybe once a month or so. Jodie isn’t a huge fan of them, and I don’t really go to breakfast myself.”

“Why not?”

“Because that would require me to get up at a reasonable hour, not just for class, and I have snacks in my room. I even have my own personal coffee maker in there that makes one cup at a time.”

“And what’s her name?” Enid asked as she cut into her waffle.

“How do you know that she’s a she?”

“Just a hunch.”

Caroline smiled at her and said, “She’s Chloe, the coffee maker. She’s friends with Miranda.”

“Miranda has friends?” Enid joked and took her first bite.

“Believe it or not, yes.”

“Well, I’m glad about that. I’d hate for her to be in your room with all those other people and have no friends. Are they people?” Enid asked.

Caroline laughed and said, “We really don’t have to keep talking about how I name my appliances.”

“Sorry.” Enid laughed, too. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. What are you doing after this?”

“After? Nothing. I have plans tonight, but I might end up at my friend’s bar after that. I sometimes go there to hang out.”

“Your friend has a bar?”

“My friend Rory has a friend named Candace. Candace has the bar. I know Candace, too, but Rory is closer to her. It just opened last month. I usually drink for cheap or free. Do you want to go?”

“Uh…” Caroline looked down at her waffle. “I’ve got another couple of weeks before I can get in. If she doesn’t card at the door, I can sit there with you. I just won’t be able to order anything unless she’s okay with me being underage.”

Enid seemed to consider this and said, “I don’t always go.” She shrugged a shoulder and took a drink of her coffee. “What are you doing today?”

“I was thinking about going to the mini-golf place. They have an arcade, apparently.”

“Apparently?”

“I’ve never been. My roommate was telling me.”

“You’re going with her?” Enid asked and took another bite of her waffle.

“No, I was going to see if you wanted to go. She’s busy.”

“To mini-golf? I haven’t done that in years,” Enid replied. “I’m really bad at it.”

“Me too, probably. The last time I went, I gave up on one of the holes because I couldn’t get past the windmill.”

Enid laughed and said, “Well, it sounds like fun.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Enid said.

“Can I ask you something? Can it maybe be a date?” she blurted out and picked up her own coffee cup to take a drink of the way-too-hot and way-too-bitter liquid.

“A date?”

“Yeah,” she replied after setting her cup back down. “I don’t know. It just feels like maybe we’ve been kind of flirting or something.”

“Or something,” Enid said with a smile.

“Is that a no?”

“It’s not a no, but I should tell you that I’m kind of maybe dating someone,” Enid replied.

“Oh.”

“Nothing serious. We only had our first date last night.”

Caroline nodded and asked, “Are you going out again?”

“We texted after the date, and she asked me out again. I told her yes.”

“Okay. Well, we can still do mini-golf. It doesn’t have to be a date.” Caroline looked down at her waffle and tried to cover the blush on her cheeks that came with the embarrassment of being rejected.

“Would you be okay with me going out with her again but us going out, too ?”

Caroline looked up and asked, “You’d date both of us?”

“I don’t know,” Enid told her with a chuckle. “This is new to me. I asked Jill out that night at the bar. I didn’t know I’d be bumping into you again and that you’d ask me out.”

“Do you like her? Sorry. Dumb question. You’re going out with her. Of course, you do.”

“We’re going out tonight. Those are my plans before I maybe go to the bar,” Enid said. “But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I like her like that.”

“Why are you going out with her, then?”

“I feel like I could, or maybe I should like her like that,” Enid replied. “It’s weird. I don’t know how to explain it. She’s great. She’s a friend of Rory’s.”

“Rory has a lot of friends,” Caroline remarked before she took another bite of her waffle.

“She’s gotten a few new ones recently. It’s a long story. Anyway, I feel like I owe it to myself and to Jill because I already said yes to going out with her tonight, but… I don’t know. I think there might be something here.”

Caroline nodded and said, “I think you’re right.”

“So, I guess I’m asking you if you’d be okay going on a date with someone who’s also going on a date with someone else.”

“Well, I’m not looking to get married tomorrow, and I’ve dated two people at once, so I know how that goes.”

“You have?”

“Once,” she replied. “Freshman year. I met a girl right when I got here, and we went out for a few weeks before I met someone else. Since we weren’t exclusive, I went out with the other girl, too, for about a month.”

“How did that go?” Enid asked.

“Good until they decided that they wanted to date each other and dropped me.”

Enid laughed and said, “No…”

“Yeah. It was fine, though. I realized I didn’t want anything serious with either of them, so it worked out.”

“And then, there was Brooke?” Enid asked.

Caroline quirked an eyebrow and said, “Jealous?”

“You drew her vagina in IMAX 3D, so yeah.”

That made Caroline laugh harder than she had laughed in a very long time, and God, it felt good. Hanging out with Enid like this and talking about what they were talking about felt very, very good.

“There were other women before Brooke. Two more.”

“Did you draw their vaginas, too?”

“No.” Caroline laughed again. “I don’t always draw the female anatomy of the girls I date.”

“How long have you been out?”

“Since high school.”

“Were you ever with–”

“A guy?” No,” she said. “You?”

“No,” Enid replied. “I’ve known forever.”

“Me too,” Caroline shared. “And I’d like to go out with you even if you’re going out with Jill, too. If it doesn’t work out, so be it, but I want to.”

Enid smiled at her and said, “Okay. Well, you have more practice at this than I do, apparently. I have no idea how to date two women at once. How do we do this?”

“Oh, no.” Caroline laughed. “I’m not helping you figure out how to balance me and Jill. But it’s really cute that you thought I would.”

Enid laughed as well and said, “I guess that’s fair. But if we’re going out, I don’t think our first date should be playing mini-golf in the middle of the day.”

“No? I thought it could be fun.”

“It will be, but I’d rather take you out to dinner for our first date, if that’s okay. Maybe for date number two, we could do the mini-golf thing.”

“You’re assuming you’ll get a second date,” Caroline replied.

“Also fair.”

“Enid, I don’t know that we’ll get there, but if you get there with Jill, and we’re thinking about getting… there together, I’d want to know. I need to be sure I’m being safe.”

“Oh,” Enid said. “Yeah, I–” She nodded. “We’ve had one date. Nothing even close to that happened.”

“You don’t have to tell me the details or anything. I’d just like to know so that we can–”

“Get tested. Yeah, I get it.” Enid nodded and then took a drink of her coffee. “I’ve been tested since the last woman I was with. Just an FYI.”

“Me too.”

“Okay,” Enid replied. “Well, this is weird to talk about before a first date, huh?”

Caroline laughed and said, “Yes. Let’s get back to talking about the appliances with faces I draw because I’m weird.”

“Not the naked women you draw because you can?” Enid joked.

“ Woman . It was one woman,” she said with her index finger held up.

“You’re really talented,” Enid replied.

“At drawing vaginas?”

“Yes,” Enid said seriously, and her tone had changed.

Her voice was deeper now, and it made Caroline nearly drop her fork on her plate.

“Yeah?” she asked, silently wondering at the reason for that sudden shift.

Enid nodded and said, “Yes.”

“Well, not to try to take this in another weird direction, but I’m not just good at drawing them.” She closed her eyes and cringed while Enid laughed loudly. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she added and covered her face with her hands.

“No, keep going. What else are you good at with them?”

Caroline could not stop laughing with this woman. She didn’t want to say goodbye, but after they finished eating, she had to do so outside the dining hall because they agreed that they wouldn’t play mini-golf today but that it could be in their near future. They were going on a date, and that had been her goal anyway, so she could deal with not going to some mini-golf place today if it meant that they got to do that. The only problem was that Enid had a date with someone named Jill tonight.

◆◆◆

“She’s seeing someone else? Why was she flirting with you, then?” Jodie asked when Caroline returned to her room to find her friend still sitting on her bed while Viv was reading a book on her bottom bunk.

“She’s not seeing her. They’ve had one date,” Caroline replied and climbed up to her bed to sit next to Jodie. “But I do hate that a girl named Jill is going to be two dates ahead of me. Is it wrong to think that way?”

“Depends on what they do on those dates,” Jodie said. “Have they…”

“No,” she said quickly.

“Okay. Then, you’re still in the game.”

“I don’t want a game, Jodie. I just like a girl, and I want that girl to like me.”

“She does. She’s going out with you,” Viv noted.

“Yeah. When?” Jodie asked.

“Tomorrow night,” Caroline replied. “We’re going to dinner.”

“I can help you get ready, if you want,” Jodie offered.

“Maybe. I’ll let you know,” she said, trying not to worry that Enid had a date with someone else in just a few hours.